I wrote about John "Rambo" Derbyshire's whine about how wimpy the victims were in not taking this guy out. Others on the right, Michelle Malkin for instance, have started blaming the education system for turning our young men into heartless, gutless wimps, who cower when a maniac points a gun at them (I suppose she really liked Samuel Jackson's line in Pulp Fiction where, confronted by a robber at the diner, says, "This isn't the first time today I've had a gun pointed at me," all calm, cool, and collected).
Now we have that sorry pathetic excuse for a human being, Dinesh "Distort D'Newsa" D'Souza, writing here (with a hat tip to Digby, and also Obsidian Wings, whose take on this piece is wonderful). The part where he answers D'Souza's question about the presence of atheists in the wake of tragedy is priceless: "So that's why I couldn't find me." I shall reprint D'Souza's little failed typing exercise in full. It's short (which is lucky, cause I just had lunch):
Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.
The universe doesn't have a "characteristic", main or otherwise. Atheism, it seems to me, has never had a problem dealing with the question of evil. Had D'Souza spent more time in class at Dartmouth and less time making up stuff to put in the student newspaper, he might have read Freud and the Frankfurt School (especially Herbert Marcuse) and any of a host of social theorists who have written on the topic. Of course, since these folks are atheists, I suppose what they have to say means nothing to Dinesh. In fact, I doubt reading them would matter because, while I have little truck with Richard Dawkins, invoking his name, and distorting his argument (and granting will and agency, including indifference, to conglomerations of atoms in the process) does not help at all.
Because he seems incapable of being embarrassed at how stupid he is, I refuse to waste my time being embarrassed for him. I would rather put his writings out there for all to see and laugh at. The bit about "good", "evil", and "souls" not existing in a "materialist universe" (whatever that means) is really funny. I mean, seriously. Good and evil are human constructs based upon what is and is not socially acceptable behavior. That's all. For the Romans, watching people kill each other, throwing religious minorities and other criminals in to a ring to be devoured by lions and tigers, was all OK. For us, it isn't. I happen to think we're a better society for it, but I certainly can't prove that point by reference to something "out there" called "good" and "evil". As for the soul, well . . . let's just not talk about that, OK? I really, really don't want to make D'Souza look any worse than he already does.
There are always atheists in foxholes, or at mass murder sites. We just don't listen to them, because some people with a certain agenda lift up those people who happen to mention one deity or another.
Since his last book tanked, I don't think he has helped his prospects for a new book deal with this little piece of non-intellectual fluff. Maybe Dancing With the Stars needs another right-wing has-been, since Tucker Carlson fared so badly before.
